The Might Have Been

CHAPTER Eight





The next June, he drove to an Indians tryout camp in Cleveland, booking a room in a Holiday Inn a few blocks from the stadium. It was an extravagance. He had less than six hundred dollars to his name and the three days and two nights in the city would consume a third of it. But he knew the less expensive places would be near the highway and the constant thrum of traffic would keep him awake. He saw this as a last chance: if they gave him a contract, it wouldn’t be for the majors, but no worse than double-A, six hundred a month and within shouting distance of the big club if he played well and found some luck—an injury up the line, a trade, a manager who wanted to shake things up.

He had hoped his room would have a view of the stadium but it didn’t; it was on the second floor, overlooking the littered roof of the parking garage. A convention of optometrists was in town and nearly every room within a mile radius of the city center was booked; he was able to get the one he did only because the hotel had a cancellation. “It’s a sad story,” the clerk said, taking his reservation two days earlier. “They were coming for their sixtieth anniversary but the gentleman was hospitalized.”

“For what?” Edward Everett asked.

“I’m not certain,” the clerk said. “Is that Y-E-A-T-S?”

Although the anniversary couple had canceled their reservation, guest services clearly hadn’t gotten the word. When Edward Everett checked in, three vases holding five dozen roses sat on the bureau, a card stuck among the flowers: To my Gloria, all my love, Jasper. Beside them, a bottle of 1961 Grand Dom champagne chilled in an ice bucket. He considered calling the clerk, letting her know it was there, but didn’t. If he got a contract, he could take it home, celebrate. It struck him: if he didn’t get a contract, he might just drink it to toast the end of his days in baseball.

He left a six a.m. call. The tryouts began at nine but he wanted to get to the stadium early; show them that he was willing to do whatever it took to get back into the game. When the desk clerk phoned to wake him, he ordered a bagel and grapefruit and gave the bellhop who brought it a five-dollar tip on a two-and-a-half-dollar expense. He was not much more than a kid: short, skinny, wearing an ill-fitting uniform, the jacket cuffs swallowing half his palms. Edward Everett thought he’d be surprised by the tip, appreciative, but he only glanced at the bill and left without a word. No matter, Edward Everett thought. It was about aligning the stars in his favor.

When he arrived at the stadium shortly after eight, already a dozen or fifteen players were running sprints across the right field grass or playing toss. In the right field bullpen, two pitchers warmed up, their throws smacking the catchers’ mitts with a sharp snap.

In the shade of the home dugout, a stout older man in a Cleveland Indians polo shirt sat in a folding chair behind a card table, and Edward Everett went over to register. As he filled out his form, he glanced at those from the other players, lying loose on the table. So many were younger than he was, he realized with a sinking heart: eighteen, seventeen, twenty-one. He considered shaving five years but didn’t. If they signed him, they’d find out his true age soon enough. He handed the form back to the man, who gave it a quick glance, flicking his finger against the box that Edward Everett had checked: “Professional experience.”

“Release?” the man said, snapping his fingers and holding out his hand without even bothering to look up. Edward Everett felt color rising in his neck and unzipped his equipment bag where he’d stowed his wallet, fished it out and found the letter he’d folded into it: the notice the Cardinals had sent him saying they were letting him go, that he was no longer their property. It was an absurd document, he thought, as he passed it to the man: less than a quarter of a page, a single-typed sentence:

“The St. Louis Cardinals National Baseball Club hereby grants Edward E. Yates his full and unconditional release.”

His name was not even typed, but scrawled in ink above a blank line in the text, in handwriting that appeared to be that of someone in a hurry, his first name rendered as a capital “E,” a lowercase “d,” and then a squiggled line. The signature of whoever sent the letter was not even an actual signature but rubber-stamped and smeared.

The man gave just a twitch of his eyes in the direction of the paper, as if he had seen hundreds of them, and then thrust it back toward Edward Everett and mumbled something that took Edward Everett a moment to decipher: “Guwuhma.” Go warm up.

“Yes, sir,” Edward Everett said, and stepped out of the dugout onto the field in search of someone to play catch with.

The release had come in the mail on the day after Christmas. He was carrying out the holiday garbage—a trash can overflowing with torn wrapping paper and the carcass of the turkey his mother had cooked for dinner the day before—when the postal truck pulled to the curb. The mail carrier gave him a honk and a wave out the window and then held the mail aloft for Edward Everett. “I think you’re gonna wanna see this one,” he said, waving a business envelope in the air. They had been classmates, Edward Everett and the carrier, Geoff Symons. “It’s from the Cardinals,” Symons said, opening the door. He was vastly overweight and thrust himself out of the truck only with a great effort, then waddled to the curb with the mail in his hand, the letter from the Cardinals on top. “What’re they offerin’ this year? A hundert grand, I’m guessin’.”

Edward Everett felt his head go light when he saw the envelope. Contracts came in thick manila envelopes, but only one thing came from the team in a thin business envelope. He took the mail from Symons dumbly and walked back inside.

“Ain’t you gonna open it?” he was aware of Symons calling after him, but went on into the house. “Man, you’re going to have one great-ass season.”

“What on earth are you doing?” his mother asked. She was rehanging the ornaments the cat had knocked off the tree and he only then became aware that he was still holding the trash can, canted at an angle so that daubs of dressing and cranberry sauce oozed onto the carpet. He set the trash can down and stared at the mess he’d made.

“Oh, my God,” his mother said. “Someone died. Who died?”

“I did,” he said.

By then, he was nearly fully healthy, walking without pain. When he ran, he was still conscious of the fragility of his joint, though: doing laps at the high school track, his knee was often stiff and he could hear disconcerting pops. He had yet to test it completely, running full-out, but he knew he would have to get past his fear if he was to play again: speed had been his greatest asset, compensating for his shortfalls—it added points to his average because it gave him eight or ten more hits in a season than someone slower might have, and that was the difference between batting .300-something and .280-something; without power, .280 didn’t get you noticed, but .300 did.

He called Hoppel, certain someone in a rush had copied a wrong name onto the letter. It would turn out to be something they laughed about. Frame it, kid, Hoppel would say. The letter will be as famous as “Dewey Defeats Truman” someday.

Hoppel’s wife answered the phone. He couldn’t remember her name: “M” something. Madeline. Martha. She was large-boned and lacked what Edward Everett’s mother would call “polish”: her voice was gruff and her movements awkward. On the one occasion Hoppel brought her to the clubhouse, he seemed to show her off as if she were a great prize of a woman. Some of the team was undressed, coming out of the shower, wet towels draped over their shoulders, but she gave them no mind. “Hell,” she snapped as one of them—a young black kid who played second base—darted back into the shower when he saw her, “ain’t nothin’ I ain’t seen before.”

“Yeah?” she said into the phone now, as if challenging whoever called. When Edward Everett asked to talk to Hoppel, she shouted, without taking the receiver away from her mouth. “Hop? Hop?”

“What is it?” Hoppel said when he picked up. In the background, Edward Everett could hear voices: loud laughter and the squeal of a baby.

“It’s—” Edward Everett started to say, but Hoppel interrupted him.

“Hang on.” To someone in the background, he yelled, “I ain’t done with that plate yet. Leave it.”

It was obvious that Edward Everett had interrupted a family meal, Hoppel and his children and grandchildren.

“Sorry to bother you, Skip,” Edward Everett said.

“Who is this?”

“Yates,” he said.

“Yates?” Hoppel said as if he were trying to place him.

“Double E,” he said, hating the nickname as he said it, as if he were a pair of shoes for some large man.

“What’s goin’ on?”

“I got this letter—” he began.

“Those f*ckers,” Hoppel said.

“Yeah, I thought it was a mistake,” he said, thinking that Hoppel was going to say the letter was meant for someone else or at least curse the team for cutting him loose, but Hoppel went on: “Christmas. They send those things out at Christmas. Christ.”

Edward Everett felt a stone in his stomach. “It’s not—”

“Look, here’s my advice. Go sell straw or whatever the f*ck it is guys sell in whatever neck of the woods you’re from. Indiana, right?”

“Ohio.”

“Ohio, Indiana, whatever. Go sell straw or whatever. Tell guys stories. Civilians eat that shit up. If you can’t think of a story, make one up. You’ll sell a lot of straw.”

“Straw?” Edward Everett said dumbly.

“Straw. Tractors. Pitchforks. It don’t matter a crap.”

“Are you saying—”

“Hey,” Hoppel shouted. “Leave my f*cking plate alone.” He hung up and Edward Everett looked at the phone in his hand for a moment before he replaced it in the cradle. He’d expected Hoppel at least to say that the team had made a mistake; that Edward Everett would surely hook up with another organization. It was as if, now that he was dead to the team, he was dead to Hoppel as well.